Orphans
by usernamemcgee
Summary: A young orphan is accidentally kidnapped by a somewhat incompetent criminal on the run from various Russians, the police, and now the orphans surprisingly useful friends. An AU set in 1960s London and incorporates a lot of HIVE characters, with some headcanons thrown in. Rated T for infrequent/strong language and violence in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

When Otto first heard the noise, his head jerked up sharply, his breath catching. It wasn't uncommon for people to be awake in the night; Otto himself was frequently up till midnight, gazing over book after book in the dim candlelight; which was what he had just been doing. But Otto recognised a noise that shouldn't be there.

The noise – like a soft thud – had come from downstairs, but Otto knew that everyone slept upstairs, and to take the stairs meant stepping on the fourth step from the bottom, and the fourth step's creak was loud enough to be heard in Otto's bedroom. He hadn't heard the creak. Otto doubted that anyone was taking the stairs two at a time in pitch darkness.

He remained deathly silent for several seconds; maybe he had just imagined the noise, maybe he'd been too engrossed in his book to hear the creak. Then the noise happened again.

_Thud. Click. Creak_.

Someone was breaking in.

Otto got out of his bed, leaving his book, and picked up his cricket bat. He briefly considered bringing his candle with him, but he realised that the intruder didn't know that Otto was there, and the candle would alert them to his presence. Instead, he left it burning in his room.

As he descended the stairs he could hear the quiet movement from the ground floor; his heart thudded in his chest, his throat felt tight, he began to regret trying heroics. What good would he be against a grown man? Why didn't he just wake the others in the home up? He should just go back up to his room and pretend he hadn't –

_Creak_.

In all his worrying he'd forgotten the fourth step. Otto froze, as did the muffled noise from the darkness below him. There went the element of surprise.

Otto moved first, hurrying down the last few stairs as quietly as possible, and huddling in the darkest gap that he could get to. Otto hoped that the intruder would lose where he was if he was quiet enough, and Otto was pretty sure that the noises had been coming from the living room, there wasn't anywhere to go from there but back out the window or into the hall, right next to where Otto was hiding.

Otto was barely breathing by this point, his grip on the bat so tight that his knuckles hurt, he was sure they'd be white if he could have seen them.

Suddenly, there was a scuffling noise from the other side of the hall, Otto turned his head sharply and –

…

The intruder winced as he looked down at the person's limp body on the floor. The hit on the head from the lamp had sent him down quickly, but he wasn't sure how quiet it had been, and he certainly didn't want to have to sort out anyone else. He'd just been lucky that the person had made the mistake of thinking he was in a different room.

He squinted in the darkness – the body was pretty small. And very… limp. Was it still breathing?

"Oh," muttered the intruder, "_pissing __**hell**_."

...

**Author's Note**: This is pretty rough, and may later be subject to revisions, or complete destruction. Also, if some characters are acting OOC, I know it's a little weird to read (it's certainly a little weird to write) I hope to rectify this with character development later on as this is supposed to be an origins story.


	2. Chapter 2

The dark Ford Capri pulled up outside the small warehouse with as much nonchalance as an inanimate object can do anything.

The sun had not yet creeped over the horizon the world washed in dark blue gloom that made you wonder why you were awake; black ice on the road had caused an accident in Bromley, and a child had been hit by a car. But Sid was a confidant driver, and the short journey from his house had been uneventful, as usual.

He whistled 'Ticket to Ride' by the Beatles as he exited the vehicle. He didn't like the song, but it was stuck in his brain, and with the radio falling in love with the Beatles their seemed to be no escape from it. He felt in his jacket pocket for the warehouse key, and span the key ring on his finger as he walked the small distance to the entrance.

As he neared the entrance, his numb fingers dropped the keys on the ground.

"Woops," he muttered, and quickly retrieved them. Then he unlocked the warehouse and entered.

It took his eyes a second to get used to the gloom, the large windows that faced the road didn't do much with the grime covering them.

Despite Sid's love of cleanliness, the warehouse was usually something of a mess; that was the difficulty with running a criminal organisation, the people you employed were never too interested in orderliness. On any given day the place may be covered in guns, boxes of drugs, decks of cards that had been thrown down and not picked up again after a particularly hostile game.

Today, the floor was littered in bodies, and soaked in blood.

Sid blinked slowly, twice, he continued to just stare, recognising each wide eyed, slack jawed face. He swallowed, unsure of what to do.

A low groan made him nearly jump out of his skin, before coming to his senses and hurrying to where the noise had come from – he saw one of the bodies was still moving slightly.

He knelt down next to the large man's body.

"Gregori?" Sid whispered, scared of his voice cracking if he talked to loud, "what happened?"

Gregori opened his once bright eyes – now dull and distant, looking up at his friend.

"You – you're alive?" Gregori croaked.

"What happened?" Sid repeated, louder, more desperately.

"They came here, looking for you, I think."

"Who came here?"

"They said they wanted to speak to you, ask you where 'Nathanial Nero' is."

"Who?" the name meant nothing to Sid.

"I don't know," Gregori's breath rattled as he wheezed, then a frown flashed across his features, "you need to get out of here."

"We need to get you to a hospital – I'll use the payphone on the corner-"

"No, you need to go," insisted Gregori, "please, you have to get out."

The force that was in Gregori's faltering voice caused Sid to pause. Sid grabbed Gregori by the front of the man's shirt.

"Who did this, Gregori?"

He never got an answer from Gregori, for as he opened his mouth to speak, a bullet smashed through windows, and forced itself through Gregori's head and into the floor behind him.

Up to that point, the eerie quiet had endowed Sid with a feeling of floating calm, himself and reality oddly disjointed. Seeing chunks of his friend's head being blown onto the floor snapped him out of it. He dropped the lifeless body, and ran to the exit, already fumbling for his car keys as another bullet bit at the air behind his heels.

It took him seconds to reach the car, he hoped that it was less time than it would take the attacker to reach Sid from his hiding spot.

Unfortunately, as he reached the handle a shot went through the car door, so he scrambled around to the side of the car that hadn't been shot. For a moment he considered staying there with the safety of the car between him and his attacker, but he was smart enough to know that it would be useless in a couple of minutes when he was caught up with.

So he ran.

A short glance back allowed the view of a black clad person with a rifle giving chase. They were fast.

But he knew where he was going, and the misspent youth that had led him into a misspent adulthood had taught him many lessons on running away from people.

He began to turn the corner before he had even reached the end of the street, letting the gripless shoes slide along the ice as he turned, run a few more steps before jumping the fence into the small garden of a rundown house.

A sharp kick to the door swung it open.

"What the fu-" he pushed the woman in the hall out of his way, narrowly avoided a swing from her husband and raced out of the front door.

"Sorry!" he shouted back.

A side passage, another 3 streets, an alleyway, Sid was running out of breath. As he reached the end of yet another street he glanced back to see the pursuer turning onto the street, it appears that he had managed to gain some distance, but there was no way he could continue to keep it up.

He jumped over another fence, and immediately regretted it as his hand slipped and he fell head first onto concrete.

For a second the only thing left in his head was static, he pushed himself up off the floor – bingo! There was a small garden shed right in front of him, unlocked.

He headed in, pulling back some tarp to reveal a lawnmower, he kicked it out of the way, settling into the corner and pulling the tarp over him. He still felt dazed, the world continuing to spin despite sitting down, he tried to stay still.

He wasn't entirely sure how long he was sitting in the dark, fighting down nausea as he felt blood trickle into his eye from his head injury. It felt like hours, they had to be gone.

However, his fear peaked as he heard the door open. Oh God, he couldn't believe that he was going to be murdered huddled in the corner of a garden shed.

"Um, excuse me?" came a man's voice from the doorway.

_At least it's going to be a polite murderer_, he thought bitterly.

"I was just having breakfast, and I saw you come into the garden, through the window. That person came through a couple of minutes later, ran straight past, and, well, it's been about three hours, I thought you might be wanting to leave."

Sid slowly uncovered the sheet of tarp from himself, blearing up at the middle aged man in front of him. There was a long, awkward silence.

"Three hours?" Asked Sid.

"Around about, you must 'ave fallen asleep after that knock to the head."

Sid began to nod, but it caused his head to ache, so he stopped half way through and stared at the ceiling.

"Anyway," continued the shed owner, "if you wouldn't mind, leaving."

"Right," said Sid, stumbling to his feet, "sorry."

The man stepped to the side to let the dishevelled younger man in the suit pass, and watched as the man then clambered back over the fence, and walked away slowly.

…

Sid had spent the rest of the day drifting from café to café, formulating a plan. Whoever the hell he was dealing with were clearly professionals, and if they'd been able to take out Sid's entire group, as second rate as they were, then they'd have no trouble killing him if he got cornered. Probably the only reason that he was still alive was because they thought he could help them find this 'Nathaniel' that Gregori – he winced at the memory – had mentioned.

Unfortunately, he had no idea who Nathaniel Nero was.

Of course, if their belief that he did know was the only thing that was keeping him from having his brain splattered against the floor like… well, like a brain splattered against the floor, then who was he to correct them?

That being said, he had no intention of hanging around long enough for them to figure out how useless he really was.

He would steal a car, burn everything he could find that mentioned him and drive to… he wasn't sure. Somewhere in the south, maybe, where the weather was better.

He had made a brief stop at a public toilets to clear the blood from his face, the smell hadn't exactly helped with the nausea that was still coming in occasional waves, but he decided that walking around covered in bodily fluids was something of a faux pas, even in London.

It was finally night time, and he'd silently stolen a beaten up old Ford Anglia with a new looking number plate and a mysterious rust coloured stain on the passenger seat, he doubted the police would be alerted to its disappearance. He was almost ready to disappear.

A short drive took him to where he needed to go, and he pulled up to the large, nondescript house. It was old, but looked rundown instead of stately and was surrounded by a tall, spiked fence, with flaking black paint revealing the rusted steel below. A wave of nostalgia spread over Sid as he exited the car and looked up at the building. Then he realised that most of the memories connected to the house involved bad food and questionable childcare standards, and the nostalgia faded away pretty quickly.

He squeezed through the gap in the iron fence, where it had gotten bent out of place after the car had hit it, and crept through the garden to the window under where the office used to be. Sid took out his knife from his jacket pocket and slid the blade through the crack at the bottom, shimmying it around until he felt the catch on the window.

He crawled in through the window, making as little noise as he could and began searching through the filing cabinets. It took a good couple of minutes searching before he found what he was looking for. It was a depressingly thick file, but he'd been there for a depressingly long time.

As he took the file under his arm, he heard a creak coming from the stairs.

...

**Author's note: **5 points to whoever guesses what's up with Sid.


	3. Chapter 3

Sid had hefted the body through the back door, half crawling as the limp thing was dragged across the grass to the hole in the fence, taking his time to check that no one was around as he opened the passenger door of his stolen car before fetching the body.

He arranged the lifeless corpse in an attempt to look simply like the boy was lightly sleeping in the seat, almost crapping himself when he heard sirens nearby; but no other cars came onto the street, no one walked by.

_You sure chose a good day to accidentally murder a child_, a voice in Sid's head thought, _nice quiet night_.

_ Shut up_, replied another voice, _it's not child murder if it's accidental. _

_ Yes, you just committed child __**manslaughter**__, that's not bad at all. Understandable really._

He couldn't go home, he'd figured that out already, but he needed to get his bearings – find somewhere safe to store the body, or an deserted place – he could plant the body with some cigarettes and matches, booze and burn the place down – it would look like some runaway kid had gotten drunk and fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth; he doubted the rate of desertion from the orphanage had greatly improved since his last stay.

But he didn't go to an old deserted warehouse or factory; he found himself taking a familiar route, and when he arrived at Gregori's house he was almost mildly surprised that he'd somehow turned up there.

Gregori had a garage that connected to the rest of the house, Sid didn't have a key for it but the lock was easy enough to bypass.

He'd been handsome. Maybe not very handsome, but enough that it was a shame that he wouldn't be buried with his good looks, no, they'd been smeared across that stupid floor, and the police would come and wipe it up and hose it down and soon Gregori would be nothing more than an ugly corpse 6 feet under with a non-committal gravestone that just had a vague 'RIP' to mark how there wasn't enough good to say about him to make up an even slightly original epitaph.

These thoughts permeated and gripped Sid's mind, then the first voice came back again.

_You complain that they'll having nothing to say about him, but what did you come up with first? Hmm? He was 'handsome'. Well, that shows your priorities._

The other voice didn't reply.

Sid exited the garage, round to the front door, fished out the keys and entered the house carefully and slowly. He felt like an intruder. He was an intruder. Or was he? Gregori had given Sid the keys happily, telling him to come round any time he needed. He was nice like that.

Handsome and nice. RIP you handsome and nice person. What a wonderful tribute to put on his gravestone. He wondered what the kid in his car was like.

Would there be people laying flowers at a little memorial tree? We'll miss you, Alby, you're always in our hearts, the cards would write. Alby for Albino, how witty. Had the kid been going places? A scholarship to a good school like Sid had done? Or perhaps he was just another dumb adolescent with unfortunate hair, the police would never bother finding the body after they'd marked the file with a big 'runaway' stamp, and there wouldn't be a little memorial tree, or any cards, or flowers.

Sid had been standing blankly in the hallway for several minutes. He blinked himself out of his stupor, and went back to the garage, through the door in the utility room.

Pose the body, booze, cigarettes, some stupid child had broken into the house so out of his head that he'd just fallen asleep in the sitting room, his head so burnt up that dental records would be a pointless endeavour. Maybe he could take a few out, make the dental records even more difficult. That was a good idea, he should get rid of bodies more often.

He began to lift the corpse out of the car –

"Hhmm."

Sid let out an undignified yelp as the body fell out from his arms. He didn't breathe as he stared at the thing lay at his feet.

It had been his imagination. The car's tired old frame groaning as a weight was lifted from it.

"Uhhh."

Shit. Fuck. Nope. Damn. Darn. Heck. Hell. Flip. _Shit_. Even in his inexpert experience, he knew corpses didn't tend to moan. The kid wasn't dead.

…

Otto drifted for a while. He felt himself bump into things painfully as he was dragged along the ground, and a little while later he heard a voice talking to someone, but he couldn't hear the other person.

"Look, I can't tell you right now, but I'd appreciate it if you came over. But I'm not at my house."

A pause.

"You say 'don't get me involved with anything' like you're some sort of angel. I just want you to give me some advice. It's a little sensitive so I can't tell you over the phone."

Otto drifted back into silence.

When Otto came fully back into consciousness, he was sitting down. His limbs seemed very heavy, he couldn't move them – it took him a moment to realise they were tied with a thin rope. There was some sort of rag in his mouth, choking him slightly.

In front of him sat a man in another chair, bent over and chewing nervously on his thumb knuckle. He was probably in his mid-20s, though Otto was not a good judge of that, the man's dark hair was pushed back but had begun to fall back into his eyes, he was wearing a simple black business suit which looked like it had seen better days. All in all, he did not look well.

"Ah, hello," the man said looking up, a fake smile spread across his features, "how are you?" His voice was controlled and pleasant, in stark contrast to his appearance.

Otto groaned, panic steadily rising in him – he didn't recognise where he was, it looked like a kitchen, with off colour white tiles on the floor and walls, a kitchen stove to his right and a fridge to his left, cupboards on either side, that was all he could see in front of him, but where the light fell showed him that a large window was behind him. All this he took in in an instant, his mind immediately trying to decipher ways to escape.

The man shifted his position to be more upright, hands on knees. Otto saw bloodstains on the man's shirt.

"Right. First of all," the man began, "I'm really sorry about all this – I didn't mean to hurt you. I mean, when I thought I'd killed you and it turned out you were alive, it was mixed feelings, but, I think this is better. Sorry, I should have planned this speech before you woke up," the pleasant tone did little to calm Otto, who was struggling to control his breathing with the growing panic and the rag in his mouth.

Otto heard the doorbell ring, and the man seemed to perk up a little. He got up and left the kitchen. Otto heard the door open, but it was too muffled by the kitchen door to hear the greeting. Footsteps, and their voices became clearer.

"Ok, promise me this, you're not going to get angry," came the voice of the original man.

"Saying that just makes me get angry earlier, Sid," this voice was also male, but gruffer, and slightly agitated, "what happened?"

Sid didn't speak for a moment, when he did it was more subdued.

"They're all dead. I went to the warehouse yesterday, and they were all dead."

"What are you talking about?"

"Can I get any clearer? They're dead, every one of them. Murdered. Shot mostly, I think, I didn't stick around."

"Christ. Do you know who?"

"That's where it gets ambiguous. Gregori was still breathing long enough to tell me that someone was after me, they said they wanted me to help them find someone else, but then…"

"Then what?"

Otto heard Sid describe how his day had been, following the story up to the man's visit to the orphanage. _Damn_, Otto thought as he heard the story, _he __**had **__been in the office_. _I'm such an __**idiot**__._

"You killed a child?" shouted the visitor.

"Feel free to shout louder, I don't think the NYPD heard you," Sid said sarcastically.

"You _killed_ a _child_," he repeated.

"No I bloody didn't. I thought I did, but, when I got back here he woke up, so now he's in the kitchen."

"The place with all the knives? You really are stupider than I thought."

"He's tied up, obviously, but I need your advice."

"Advice on what? How to fuck up more?"

"Now you're just being unfair."

"_Am _I? Look, Sid, just let the kid go."

"Are you sure? What if he talks?"

"Then you'll be a hundred miles away by then if you have any sense. I don't appreciate the fact that you were going to leave without a second thought to me, but if these people are really that serious then you need to get out of this city. This country, even."

The handle on the kitchen door turned, and the new man walked in. He was tall, though slightly shorter than the man he called Sid, and with wider shoulders. He was bald, but the look suited him. Overall he looked powerful, stern and very annoyed.

Otto would have licked his lips if it weren't for the rag. He just stared, wide eyed, at the new man.

He shook his head and turned back to Sid, "he's barely 14," he said. Otto was 15.

The man turned back to Otto, "listen," he said, "my name's Diabolous, if I take out the gag, will you tell me your name?"

He took the rag out of Otto's mouth with surprising gentleness.

"My name's Otto Malpense," Otto said after taking a few lungful's of relatively fresh air.

"Hi Otto, I'm sorry about my associate here," from behind Diabolous, Sid rolled his eyes impatiently, "but he really didn't mean to hit you, and if we let you go you've got to promise not to tell anyone."

"They'll ask me where I've been all night," said Otto.

"You're going to have to lie about that, just say you went out with some friends."

"Who are you?" asked Otto.

"I told you, my name's-"

"I don't mean your name, I mean why are you being chased?"

"Well I'm not being chased," said Diabolous.

"If these people are killing people he knows," Otto nodded towards Sid, "then surely they're going to be looking for you, and now they'll kill me for knowing you to. You can't send me back if I'm going to get murdered!"

"Look," said Sid, "no one's going to kill you – you're really not very important."

"Sid, please, have some tact," protested Diabolous.

"They'll go after your family as well," continued Otto, and when Diabolous tensed up he sensed that he'd hit a nerve, "by the sounds of it anyone connected to this guy isn't safe."

"This one's clearly playing with you," Sid told Diabolous, "he doesn't know anything about it."

Diabolous whipped round to glare at Sid.

"Shut up," he told Sid, as a bullet cracked through the window behind Otto and whizzed through the spot where Diabolous' head had been just a second before.


	4. Chapter 4

They both dropped to the ground in an instance, Otto left there as an easy target. Luckily, Sid seemed to realise this and kicked the chair from under Otto, sending him crashing painfully onto the floor with the other two as a second bullet speeded through the glass and into the floor in front of him.

"How the hell did they find you?" shouted Diabolous.

"I don't know – I swear no one followed me," replied Sid. The three lay there for a moment, Otto biting back tears as the sharp wooden chair dug painfully into his limbs and his head continued to sting.

"They've stopped shooting," Sid said, "they'll try to get in here to finish us off, we need to make an ambush."

"How the hell do we do that when they already know we're here?"

The taller man stopped still for a moment, eyes darting around the room as gears shifted in his head.

"Stay here," he said eventually, "close the door behind me," he carefully shuffled out the door, and Otto heard quiet movement outside the kitchen.

"Please untie me," pleaded Otto, "I won't try to run, I just want to be able to protect myself."

Diabolous reached up to pick a large knife from the kitchen counter, and Otto thought he was about to get cut free but then Diabolous shrugged, "sorry, got to protect myself."

"What about me?" Otto hissed.

The front door opened and closed, the creak was unavoidable but there were no footsteps to follow. Otto strained his ears for a clue to as the intruder's location, but they were either not moving at all, or silent.

If only the kitchen door was open slightly more, he just needed a slightly better angle and Otto was sure he would be able to see the intruder. He was beginning to lose feeling in the arm that his weight rested on.

The intruder came into view, stalking around the living room. They wore a tight black outfit and face concealing mask, an assault rifle raised to their shoulder and what appeared to be the hilts of swords strapped to her back. Otto's heart stopped as his soon to be killer's head snapped around to look at him and Diabolous, whose kitchen knife simply looked comical by this point.

"You know," began Diabolous nervously, "I don't even know the guy you want, so if you just want to kill him and leave, that's fine by us, right Otto?"

Otto nodded enthusiastically.

The masked figure tilted their head, then said something muffled by their headgear.

"Excuse me?" said Diabolous, "didn't quite catch that."

The assassin lowered the rifle and then dropped it to the floor, before pulling the black mask that hid their face. Otto's eyes widened in surprise as the young women dropped the mask. She could only have been a couple of years older than Otto, with short black hair and a pretty face. Her icey blue eyes didn't portray a hint of emotion as she repeated her question.

"Where is he?" she asked with a thick Russian accent.

Diabolous answered again, "he's probably just up the stairs, bastard's probably trying to climb out the window, leaving me in it, of course."

This seemed to satisfy the girl's interests, or perhaps it was the plate aimed at her head that distracted her. She dodged it easily, but Diabolous took the opportunity to lunge at her with his full weight, kitchen knife aimed for her eyes. A swift kick to his ribs left him gasping for breath, knife dropped and forgotten, just as Sid wrapped his forearm around the assassin's neck.

Otto shuffled and wriggled around to get a better look as the girl delivered another kick to Diabolous' face and delivered a sharp elbow to Sid's ribs. He held tight but she forced all her weight into him while Diabolous still struggled to regain his bearings. The assassin finally threw Sid off, who took the opportunity to grab one of the swords from the scabbards on the assassin's back.

When he had gotten a firm stance he appeared to suddenly realise that he had no idea what to do with a sword. He swung clumsily but quickly, the girl raised her arm to protect herself and the sword sunk a centimetre into the black armour on her forearm. She tried to reach for her second sword while Sid attempted to yank the first out of the armour, but instead he pushed the sword forward, the tip sliced into the assassin's cheek leaving a deep gash. Her free hand went to her face, just as Sid ripped the sword free and Diabolous came behind her with a vase, and planted a square hit at the back of her head.

The assassin crumpled to the floor, out cold.

The two men gasped for a moment, before Sid wheeled round angrily at the other.

"You _bitch_!"

"What?"

"'I don't even know the guy'? You were selling me out," Sid cried angrily.

"Oh come on, Sid, you'd have done the same for me."

"Well, maybe," huffed Sid, "but it's the principle of the thing."

A few minutes later and Otto was upright again, but now he had a friend to keep him company. Or at least, the girl who had just been trying to kill him was tied down to another chair, and they sat back to back with their chairs also tied together.

Presently Sid was attempting to reason with the girl who'd been trying to murder the 3 of them a little while earlier.

"Listen, I'm not opposed to helping you find this 'Nero' guy, but I'd really appreciate it if you stopped trying to kill people that don't need to be killed," he said as he wiped the blood from the girls face. He got no reply.

"Are you going to at least tell me your name?"

"Raven," she said flatly.

"That's an odd name," Sid said with fake cheer, "do you have a surname?"

"Raven."

"Raven Raven, what a lovely name."

Otto couldn't even see the girl and he could still feel the glare.

"Alright then," continued Sid, "you don't like jokes. Can't blame you, it was hardly highbrow humour." His voice hardened, "look, I'll find your Nathaniel Nero, and when I do, you can do whatever you want with him. But then you leave me alone. If I think for even a second that you're going to betray me, I'll kill you." His tone became friendly again, "anyway, I think we've had enough adventure for a while, and I'm quite tired, so I'm going to have a nap, then we can get to work."

With that, Sid placed a gag in Raven's mouth, and left Otto alone with her in the kitchen.


End file.
